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=                   Letters_of_a_Javanese_Princess                   =
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                            Introduction
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'Letters of a Javanese Princess' (; 'Through darkness to light:
Thoughts about and for the Javanese people'; Indonesian/; 'After
Darkness Comes Light') is a posthumous book of letters by the Dutch
East Indies women's rights activist and intellectual Kartini. The
letters, which were written in Dutch, reveal Kartini's views on
society and modern life, and were collected by one of Kartini's
correspondents  and published in 1911. They have since been translated
into a number of other languages, including an English language
version in 1920 and a Malay language version published by Balai
Pustaka in 1922. The book became an important symbol both for liberal
Dutch colonial policy (the Dutch Ethical Policy) and for Indonesian
nationalism.


                              History
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Kartini (1879-1904) was the daughter of an aristocratic Javanese
family from Jepara. Unusually for the time, she was schooled in the
Dutch language and read, wrote and corresponded extensively as a youth
living in aristocratic seclusion. She had hoped to leave home to
obtain further education, but was denied by her family, since it was
unheard of at that time. Therefore she was mostly self-educated, and
soon became very well-informed on colonial politics, modern issues,
and was an admirer of Abdoel Rivai. The letters she wrote, which were
written between 1899 and 1904, were addressed to around ten Europeans
whom she mostly met in Java, including the Indies Minister of
Education Jacques Henrij Abendanon and his wife Rosa Abendanon, Nellie
van Kol (wife of the politician Henri van Kol), Marie Ovink-Soer (wife
of the Resident of Jepara) and so on. In the letters she discusses her
views on politics and culture, her family life, and her relationships.

After her untimely death in 1904 at the age of 25, J. H. Abendanon
began to collect letters Kartini had written to him and other
Europeans. Selected letters were edited by Abendanon and published by
G. C. T. van Dorp in 1911, both in Java and in The Hague, under
Abendanon's evocative title 'Through darkness to light'. The book sold
very well and several more printings were issued in the 1910s;
Abendanon used some of the proceeds to found girls' schools in the
Indies.
Because of its popularity, the book was eventually translated and
published in other languages. Starting in late 1919 some letters were
translated into English and serialized in Atlantic Monthly; by 1921
these were published in book form by Knopf under a new title, 'Letters
of a Javanese Princess'. At Abendanon's request, in 1922 the book was
published in Malay translation by the colonial printing house Balai
Pustaka; it was a group effort by Empat Saudara (Bagindo Dahlan
Abdullah, Zainudin Rasad, Sutan Muhammad Zain, dan Djamaloedin Rasad).
A fourth Dutch edition in 1924 had an expanded text by Abendanon in
which he described the advances of girls' education in the Indies
since Kartini's death.


                      Significance and legacy
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The publication of the book, and its subsequent commercial success,
turned Kartini into a household name in the Indies and in the
Netherlands. She became a symbol of the Dutch Ethical Policy to
liberal Europeans and of the Indonesian National Awakening to
Indonesian nationalists. The tension between these two uses of her
ideas can be seen in Abendanon's foreword to the first edition, in
which he praised Kartini's progressive ideals but also warned that
lofty ideals can be dangerous. Abendanon heavily edited Kartini's
letters, for example to remove references to polygamy from her family
life. The English editions also excluded some of the letters from the
1911 book, downplaying her criticism of European colonialism and
paternalism. Meanwhile the 1922 Malay edition, promoted heavily by the
colonial education system, popularized Kartini and her ideas among
Indonesians.
For the next several decades, Kartini and this book became almost
unknown outside the Indies/Indonesia and the Netherlands. There were
nonetheless many new translations in other languages, including an
Arabic version in 1925, Sundanese in 1930, Javanese in 1938 and
Japanese in 1955. It was only in the late 1950s that UNESCO took
interest in her and her writings, and supported the creation of new
editions. The first was a French language translation by Louis-Charles
Damais with a foreword by Orientalist Louis Massignon, published in
1960, and in 1964 a reprint of Symmers' 1920 translation with a
foreword by Eleanor Roosevelt. At around this time Indonesian writers
also took new interest in Kartini, including Pramoedya Ananta Toer and
the journalist Soeroto. It was only in the late 1980s, after
Abendanon's descendants donated Kartini's archive to the Royal
Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, that
many of the original letters became available to scholars and started
to be published and re-translated. The most complete version is
currently the English translation by Joost Coté published in 2014
('Kartini: The Complete Writings 1898-1904 ').


                 Selected editions and translations
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* . (first Dutch edition, G. C. T. van Dorp, 1911)
* 'Letters of a Javanese princess / by Raden Adjeng Kartini ; transl.
from the Dutch by Agnes Louise Symmers; with a forew. by Louis
Couperus.' (first English translation, Knopf, New York, 1920 and
Duckworth Books, London, 1921)
*  (first Malay edition, Balai Pustaka, Weltevreden (Batavia), 1922)
*  (Mouton de Gruyter, Paris, 1960)
* 'Raden Adjeng Kartini: letters of a Javanese princess / transl. from
the Dutch by Agnes Louise Symmers; ed. and with an introd. by Hildred
Geertz; pref. by Eleanor Roosevelt'. (Norton, New York, 1964)
* 'Letters of a Javanese princess' (shortened English edition, Oxford
University Press, 1976)
*  (1976 reprint, Nabrink, Amsterdam)


                           External links
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*[https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=MMKIT03:000217878 1922 Balai
Pustaka translation] of the book (in Malay/Indonesian) from the
collection of Delpher
*[https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=MMKB18A:022616000 1911 first
edition] (in Dutch) from the collection of Delpher
*[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34647 English translation] of the
book from Project Gutenberg
*[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35220 Original Dutch text] of the
book from Project Gutenberg


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